He stepped down from his role with the party in February 2010 after being selected for the final six potential candidates for the West Suffolk constituency in the 2010 general election. Hancock narrowly won the selection contest, which took place in Mildenhall, after four rounds of voting, beating Natalie Elphicke by 88 votes to 81 votes in the final round of voting.[5]

The frequency of his appearances in the House and contributions to debates are well above average and he has voted for tuition fees, encouraging occupational pensions and raising VAT.[8] On 26 November 2011 he was on the panel for BBC Radio 4's Any Questions.[9]

In January 2013, he was accused of dishonesty by Daybreak presenter Matt Barbet after claiming he had been excluded from a discussion about apprentices after turning up "just 30 seconds late."[10] Barbet said Hancock knew he was "much more than a minute late" and he should have arrived half an hour before to prepare for the interview. His opponent expressed surprise that "a minister whose Government berates ‘shirkers’ couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed to defend his own policy."[10]

Beginning from October 2013, he has been promoted to Minister of State for Skills & Enterprise in a government reshuffle.

In the July 2014 cabinet reshuffle, he was promoted again, this time to Minister of State for Business and Enterprise, Minister of State for Energy, and Minister of State for Portsmouth. On 27th July he announced protection for National Parks[11] -seen as a method of reducing anger in Conservative constituencies ahead of the election.[12] Interviewed on the Today programme, he rejected the suggestion that fracking was highly unpopular but when challenged was unable to name a single village which supported it.[12] According to the Daily Telegraph, the UK will need an estimated 1000 such wells a year.[12]

In July 2014, in an interview for Total Politics magazine, Hancock appeared in a photograph in which - not noticed by him or the photographer - he was standing in front of graffiti that read "Sack Cameron", supposedly in reference to the Prime Minister.[13] In October 2014, he apologized after retweeting a poem suggesting that the Labour Party was "full of queers," describing his actions as a "total accident".[14]